Tag Archives: Transdermal Implants

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Arseniy Andersson‘s submissions to BME are never dull, that’s for sure! He did the ear pointing and tongue splitting in the photo below. The transdermals were done by Lari Lahti and Samppa Von Cyborg, the eyeballs by xRonix.

As I’ve mentioned before, Gabriele of MaxArt Body Piercing in Italy has been creating innovative shaped transdermals (to say nothing of his invention of the Skin Tunnel invention), starting with a cross-shaped one, and most recently a teardrop shaped one. Let me update you on the cross-shaped one first. I have to admit that I expected the skin to retract — I didn’t think this would be successful. But much to my surprise, even at three weeks in (which is when the two larger shots were taken), the skin rather than retracting, seems to be pulling in toward the implant. This is most likely due to Gabriele’s design decision of cross-drilling the transdermal (which you can see in the shots of the jewelry).

Most recently Gabriele has done a tear-shaped one as well, another piece of great design. Obviously some of these aesthetics can also be accomplished by putting shaped beads on normal transdermals, but these are much more powerful on closer inspection. Now all we have to wait for is the cheap knockoffs of his design — I’m already seeing horrendous clones of his skin tunnel that have none of the beautiful high-quality titanium machining that is typical of Gabriele’s transdermals and Skin Tunnels (manufactured by Veleno Web).

Speaking of that famous Italian inventor (no, not Leonardo) Gabriele from MaxArt, after the SkinTunnel he’s got another innovation that he’s beginning experiments with, a design for a shaped-post transdermal. These get installed like a normal transdermal would be, but the hole is cut to shape with a scalpel rather than being dermal punched as you’d do with a typical round post. I will admit that I’m not quite so certain that this will heal as beautifully, because it’s asking a lot of the body to pull into some of those little detailed indents in my opinion. Whether I’m wrong or not time will tell, and I am eagerly awaiting pictures of how the healing is going — it’s a ton of fun seeing people continuing to innovate in body modification.

Ighlif Rendina, owner and piercer at H.F. Body Art in Turin, Italy, had a customer who’d previously gotten a transdermal implant. The transdermal itself did alright, but in time, a large unsightly scar built up over the insertion incision. The microdermal was removed, and the scar reworked using a combination of cutting and cautery branding. The insertion scar became the pupil of the eye, and the scar that formed in the transdermal scar was covered up by the bottom line of the eye. In the picture where you can see the entire eye, it’s quite fresh, about two months after being done, and the picture where it’s partially covered by clothing is current, showing the piece at almost two years old.

Samppa von Cyborg (voncyb.org) has just post a nice closeup of a one year old implantation of three of his third generation transdermal implants — you may remember that we documented them in detail in an article posted in July (read that if you haven’t already). As you can see, even in this troublesome placement, with long hair around them, the healing is superb, showing only minor dryness around the exit points. I’m quite sure that the more time that passes, the more vindication these design improvements will experience.

Ok. Not quite. But that’s the image that came to mind when I saw Scott Creel’s (of Southtown in South Fort Smith, Arkansas) bumpy forehead, swollen and with a slight excess of skin after removing the large 5th generation subdermal horns he’s worn for the last two years. This photo was taken a few days after removal, and the swelling should last as long as a week. When Scott first got the horns, he was debating between subdermals and transdermals, and after a couple years of wearing the subdermals he feels it’s not the aesthetic for him and that he should have gone with the transdermals, which will happen once everything is healed, perhaps in combination with some white ink and scarification.

While I’m posting removals — and speaking of transdermals — I can’t avoid this gory excision of a big pile of early transdermals (perhaps to be replaced with the new generation later?) done by Samppa Von Cyborg. It may look like a lot of trauma, but removing them in large strips is much less messy than the cutting each one out separately, and more importantly, ensures that all scar tissue is excised, leaving as smooth a scalp as possible when the procedure is complete and healed.

This is just a very quick post to keep you all in the loop about how the second test of the SkinTunnel is going (here it is on day five, and fresh as well). Healing continues to be trouble free with everything going as expected, with excellent stability. Great work by Gabriele at MaxArt in Italy.

When you compare Mechanical Demon (tattoo artist at Harness in Helsinki, Finland) from 2007 to 2012, you can really see what an improvement the jump from tattooed and pierced person to full heavy-mod enthusiast has made. In addition to some more tattoo work, I can also see that he’s added some sternum implants, a pair of transdermal implant spike horns, radical ear pointing and I think lobe removal, as well as black eyeball tattoos. Really checked off that wish list quite successfully, didn’t he?

You can zoom that picture but the others in this entry are at full size. Anyway, to no small part because of his striking and eye-catching appearance he’s had the opportunity to model for some great photographers, but one shoot that really struck me was this amazing photo by Tinttu Henttonen, with make-up by Mia Magia. Click here for a close-up that shows his ear very nicely — the reshaping work that was done on it is quite something.

Another photo I liked was this old-time portrait, which also shows his mods nicely and reveals one that I’d missed in the first photo, a set of subdermal horns higher up the scalp, a placement that works very nicely with his transdermal spikes (but might otherwise look odd on its own).

This article is a based on the seminar notes from Samppa Von Cyborg on his transdermal implants, as prepared by Alix Fox. In this abridged form it was edited by Shannon Larratt for public presentation. While parts of this article do discuss procedural techniques, it should be emphasized that this is in no way a “how to” or training of any sort. It is being shared here to help those with an interest and passion for body modification understand the development history of transdermal implants as well as some of the medical and “wearer” issues involved.

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THE TRANSDERMAL IMPLANTS OF SAMPPA VON CYBORG

Influential body modification artist Steve Haworth is credited with inventing the transdermal implant, with the first instance being installed in 1996 as Joe Aylward’s famous “Metal Mohawk”. Four years later, Samppa Von Cyborg began implanting transdermals using posts of his own design. While these procedures were largely successful, the designs left much room for improvement. It is Samppa’s philosophy that even if something works reasonably well, it is crucial to keep researching, reassessing, and redeveloping designs and procedures in order to push body modification innovation forward and always strive strive for better results.

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